The final five cover what he terms the 'Italian School', which begins with Pythagoras and terminates with Epicurus. The first five cover what he terms the 'Ionian School', which begins with Thales and terminates (in his work) with Chrysippus. Book 10, Epicurusĭiogenes organized his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers into ten books. ![]() Let me now put the finishing touch, as one might say, to my entire work and to the life of this philosopher by presenting his Chief Maxims, thereby bringing the whole work to a close and offering as its conclusion the beginning of happiness. Unlike the corpus of Plato, which was carefully preserved by his school, or the treatises of Aristotle, which came to be widely read, studied, and copied in antiquity, it's as if the manuscript had been preserved by a quirk of fate, just like the wall paintings in Pompeii. ![]() No one knows how many copies were initially made. The manuscript may well have been published only posthumously, prepared by a scribe forced to work with unfinished material. Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as EducatorĮqually uncertain is the reason for the text's survival: if Diogenes Laertius had readers in his own lifetime, we don't know who they were. The only critique of a philosophy that is possible and that proves anything, namely trying to see whether one can live in accordance with it, has never been taught at universities all that has ever been taught is a critique of words by means of other words. I for one prefer reading Diogenes Laertius, in there lives at least the spirit of the ancient philosophers. For I am equally eager to know the fortunes and lives of these great teachers of the world, no less carefully than their doctrines and ideas.-Montaigne, Book II, Essay X: Of Books I am very sorry that we have not a dozen Laertiuses, and also that he was not more expansive or more thoroughly informed. ![]() It is presented as a mixture of a short, humorous biography, with many personal habits and behaviors, and a well-elaborated description of their philosophical beliefs and writings.ĭiogenes Laertius must have collected his information from hundreds of Ancient Greek sources and refers to a great number of quotations.įor me this was a very pleasant reading, giving an idea of how everyday life then, but more importantly an idea of the vast amount of thinking and writing on how many subjects and into how many dead ends have been necessary to lead up to our knowledge of today in many fields of science and philosophy.Ī ‘must read’ for anybody interested in Ancient Greece and Philosophy. Spanned over three centuries, from Thales (640BC-545BC) to Epicurus (342BC-270BC), the most important historical personalities, some of them well known, but others more obscure to me. “Life and Doctrines of Eminent Philosophers” This otherwise unknown Roman author is thought to have lived at the beginning of the third century during the reign of Sextius.
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